De Cecco reveals why there is a bucatini shortage in America
grubstreet.com
grubstreet.com
I'm wondering though, is fortification/enrichment in staples widespread? The US seems to do it a lot, but I checked in Australia and I can find only 2 cases of mandatory fortification[0] - Vitamin D for oil spreads (e.g. margarine) and vitamin B1 and folic acid for bread flour, and iodised salt in the bread. I suppose you can also include fluoridated tap water as fortification. I don't have either of those foods that often so hopefully I'm getting these nutrients elsewhere.
0: https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/nutrition/vitamina...
Rather than going to a landfill, they may have been delivered to a farm as food for pigs, but I imagine opening hundreds of thousands of boxes wouldn't be economically viable.
I work in food manufacturing. The opinions are my own and do not represent my employer.
Most of us on here work for someone, and our views don't represent their views. It's a given.
Sorry for the meta thread, also interested in the answer to the root comment here about food fortification.
Studies have suggested that vitamin supplements may not do a great job at improving health outcomes.
I wonder how adding vitamins and minerals to food compares to taking a supplement with and without a meal in terms of vitamin and miner absorption rates?
I don't throw the disclosure on every single comment, but it's stated on my profile, and I do commonly add it when discussing industries I've been involved with.
That's why they had to destroy the US stock: There weren't many other places where they could sell it.
The iodizing of salt comes to mind. Is that not widespread?
btw: the "fortified pasta" is something I cannot stand. You american should lobby to make "normal pasta" the only one available.
I happen to like De Cecco, and it's the one they sell at the local italian specialties store (Berlin).
Rummo is great, their penne are almost impossible to overcook.
Agnesi is also a good brand.
I'm sure you can find both in Germany - I'm able to easily find both in Poland.
La Molisana is also OK among the commercial ones.
But if you have the chance to find it, you should try some pasta from Gragnano, they normally have pretty small businesses, so it is not so easy to find abroad.
If so, I'm in luck. It can be absolutely mail ordered and I'll definitely give it a shot.
Thanks a lot. Your tips are much appreciated and will probably lead me to eating better pasta. :)
Btw I am biased: my grandmother was from Fara San Martino
Basically Cocco bought the old bronze machinery from De Cecco, when it still was a relatively small family business and not the huge company that it is today, and keeps using them... with an overhead that justifies the premium (if you like good pasta).
Anyhow, as I said, I mostly cook with De Cecco because it's easy to find in the supermarket, sometimes I go to an Italian shop that's close to where I live, and buy some artisanal pasta, and on rare occasions on holidays, I make home-made pasta (tagliatelle or pasta alla chitarra, and ragù as a sauce... it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy)
I agree that it's not that difficult to make, but I would argue that it's not necessarily much better in every case.
As my chief witness I enter Marcella Hazan. The late doyenne of Italian Cuisine.
In "The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating" she has more to say on the subject, but in short and from [1]:
"Although some types of pasta, like tagliatelle, are best made fresh at home, others, like spaghetti, should be bought dried. Pasta should be matched carefully to sauce."
I think that's the key. It really depends on the type of pasta and the sauce used.
That said: There's no doubt that ragu with freshly made tagliatelle is something devine.
On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy.
If you only had a chance to fall into the tourist traps around Piazza Navona I stumbled into....
This isn't unique to imports: standards of identity apply equally to domestic products. It's just that the FDA has tools at its disposal to block things at the border, which they used here.
There's a standard for both "enriched macaroni product" and just "macaroni product." I don't believe anything requires you to choose the enriched one, other than the fact that doing any enrichment kicks you over to the "enriched" standard and you're then locked into at least a list of several mandatory enrichments.
Some states have laws requiring enrichment of flour, bread, pasta, etc. though, and that I think is what's happening with even importers opting for enrichment: it's necessary to have access to a nationwide market.
This is a by-the-book example of selective enforcement.
It's not "just" a glitch. There are business interests for millions at play pushing for protectionism.
Q: "Can you speculate on who reported your product to the regulators?"
A: "De Cecco is committed to providing consumers with the highest quality of pasta product. We do not wish to speculate on this topic."
Q: "Why was your pasta deficient in iron?"
A: "De Cecco is committed to providing consumers with the highest quality of pasta product. We do not know."
Q: "How soon can we expect to see your pasta in stock again?"
A: "De Cecco is committed to providing consumers with the highest quality of pasta product. Some time in the future! We look forward to seeing you in the kitchen!"
To be fair they answered to that and it was quite interesting, it's just some American (and Israeli, and Tanzanian) idiosyncrasy. In other markets they cannot even sell modified pasta.
Why wouldn’t you be able to sell that in Italy or elsewhere?
GC: The short answer is that the vitamin-enriched pasta can be sold only in the U.S. market and some other countries like Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Israel, etc., as far as I know. As to the iron-deficient bucatini, we concluded it was economically less burdensome to destroy the items here in the U.S.
It’s even on sale at Amazon.ca right now, $1 (or ~US$0.75) for 450g:
https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/Molisana-Bucatini-N-12-450/dp/B07...
It was a fun headline of course and clearly one type of the pasta was not available, but “great shortage” was taking more than a little license. I guess it was more tongue in cheek than I initially understood?
I just thought it had gone out of fashion and no one was stocking it. This article was very enlightening.
I haven’t tried the Bucatini yet but I did enjoy the Brooklyn made bronze extruded pasta I bought.
At six and seven dollars a pound though it sure well better be good.
and
https://www.pastashopfresh.com
Have bucatini that is made fresh and is absolutely amazing. I found Bay View's pasta at Public Market, and it is absolutely delicious.
It sounds like it did become especially rare to find, but Eataly is a very niche store that is not readily available to most..
(ugh, I miss easy access to an eataly, it was the best grocery store)
If they don't know what's wrong, how did they know what to fix? This is still fishy to me. Also, shame on the author for using the term "ratted out" when this company was selling a substandard product to Americans.
So while you are technically correct that the product is substandard, you could well argue that the issue is the arbitrary standard rather than the actual product.
They are not just arbitrary, they are often deliberately antagonizing imports.
Pure speculation, but for example if they did design a process to enrich their pasta with iron, tested it initially, but then never tested it again (who cares if there's iron in pasta...), and then it stopped working for some reason (or possibly never worked reliably in the first place). And then instead of trying to find out what made this process not work, they just came up with a new process that did work.
As I said, it's speculation.
Another option is of course "I perfectly know, but I cannot tell you, because if I did, we'd be in legal trouble".